Canon Press is pleased to introduce The Core: Teaching Your Child the Foundations of Classical Education, by Leigh Bortins (Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2010).  Leigh is the founder and CEO of Classical Converations, Inc., the host of the weekly radio show Leigh! for Lunch, and a friend of Canon Press.

In a time when may parents are rediscovering the classical methods of education, wheither at home or in the classroom, it is heartening to see more and more educators studying, applying, and refining these methods. - Douglas Wilson

From the book:

“Children are natural learners, and building a core foundation at an early age is critical to their success both educationally and in life. Yet academic excellence is lacking in many school systems throughout the country. In this book, education expert and author Leigh A. Bortins incorporates the best ideas from the ancients and gives parents the tools to revive classical learning. In this prescriptive guide you’ll learn:

1. Techniques to help your children expand their knowledge base

2. Methods to strengthen effective self-expression

3. How to use great books and historical documents to deepen your worldview

The Core is an important resource that helps parents create ways to incorporate study into daily routines involving the entire family.”

Inside this little gem, in the “Resource Section” (pgs. 217-229), you’ll find several books published by Canon Press:

Introductory Logic (Nance, James B., and Douglas J. Wilson)

Intermediate Logic (Nance,  James B.)

Our Mother Tongue: A Guide to English Grammar (Wilson, Nancy)

Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide to Six Shakespeare Plays (Leithart, Peter J.)

Heroes of the City of Man (Leithart, Peter J.)

The Roar on the Other Side: A Guide for Student Poets (Rhodes, Suzanne)

And a few more selections from Douglas Wilson:

Recovering the Lost tools of Learning: An Approach to Distinctively Christian Education

The Case for Classical Christian Education

Read a review of the book by Stanley Fish of the Opinionator in the New York Times and then pick up your copy here.

(Words by Samuel Crossman, 1664)

My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me,
Love to the loveless shown
That they might lovely be.

If you didn’t make it to the “Good Friday” joint service for Christ Church and Trinity Reformed Church, here in Moscow, Idaho, you missed Pastor Sumpter’s thought provoking sermon. And even those who were there said they wished they could hear it again. Unfortunately, we didn’t record the service.

However, we asked Pastor Sumpter to re-record it in our humble, basement studio. So step on over to Canon’s online sermon page and listen to the sermon, in all it’s fullness, listed under Trinity Reformed Church. You won’t hear people coughing, babies crying, or general signs of life in the background, but the words will still wrap around your heart and squeeze ever-so-gently. Please feel free to copy, upload, duplicate, and whatever.

You’ll find the words and music for My Song Is Love Unknown, by John Ireland, on page 366 of the Cantus Christi.

A giant-sized “thank you” to Pastor Sumpter.

Recently TrinityTalk interviewed Pastor Steve Wilkins on the topic of Christian Friendship & Hospitality. Check out to the broadcast below.

We have some new Overstock items that I thought were worth mentioning.

First, in the Audio Overstock section, we have a number of sermon sets by Douglas Wilson which are currently half off—including Ecclesiastes, Ezra/Nehemiah, Galatians, Psalms, and more. We’re in the process of moving to a new format for our biblical studies sets, so we’re clearing out the old sets to make room for the new. (You can take a peek at two sets that we’ve already updated: Galatians and Amos.)

And second, in our Overstock/Damaged Books section, we have nicked and scuffed copies of Is Christianity Good for the World? now available for $6 per copy. If you’ve wanted to hand out copies of this debate to friends or neighbors, this is your opportunity to pick up a handful of copies at a discount. (They’re all still very readable—almost no one would notice that they were “damaged.”) We also have overstock copies of Black & Tan now available—with the 50% discount, you can pick up those copies for $7.50 a piece.

And, as always, feel free to browse through our Overstock sections. They are regularly updated, and you might find some older Canon title you’ve always wanted on sale. All of our overstock items (books and audio) are available only as quantities last.

We have just released a brand-new Cantus Christi audio companion, titled Worship in Harmony. In a nutshell, this new product is designed to help families and congregations learn to sing the Psalms and hymns from the Cantus in four-part harmony. You can read more about it here.

But we also felt that it was important to explain why we’ve taken on this project, and why we believe that learning to sing in harmony is worthwhile. So, we asked some of our local pastors and friends to write short pieces on this subject. This article, our first, is written by Pastor Toby Sumpter (Trinity Reformed Church, Moscow, ID).

Congregational singing can be one of the most glorious or most appalling sorts of experiences. Especially in smaller congregations, there may be a few trained voices and ears, but many in our generation have not grown up learning to sing psalms and hymns, much less sing in four part harmony. But this is a pursuit that many of us have undertaken, and it really should be seen as central to a recovery of a robust reformational catholicity. Not only was the ancient practice of congregational singing recovered in the Reformation, there was a certain way of being catholic that was recovered in the reformation. As the Reformers themselves insisted over and over again, they were not interested in founding a new church, rather they were seeking that one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church that had been lost or obscured somewhere along the way. Singing harmonies in four parts is a wonderful picture of the kind of catholicity the Reformers and many of us today are trying to live out. The Scriptures are the music that God has called us to sing, and you are called to sing a particular part, in your context, in your community, in your church, and in your family. And as you sing that part to the glory of God and to the best of your ability, it becomes a blessing to others; it harmonizes with the other parts and makes a glorious sound. At the same time, there will be noises that periodically erupt from a rambunctious bass section that no one wants to claim as being part of the music. There will always need to be periodic shakedowns of the choir since Christendom is a messy place to live. But we are the saints that God is gathering into his heavenly Jerusalem with all our spots and wrinkles, tone deaf and all. But Christ doesn’t leave us that way. He is washing us with water by the word, teaching us to sing and turning our messes into music. The point is that God would have us learn to be content in our places, working to make our parts glorious, working to bless the altos and tenors down the street or next door or in the pew behind you. Learning to hear the music is called faith. And by faith, we sing our part trusting the One who will continue to build His Church until we sing in four parts, until our dissonance becomes harmony.